Answers

I don't know if ther is anywhere around here that still does this. I
know when we were kids the used to give it out at a local church.
They gave away honey, peanut butter, powdered milk, rice, and some
very good American cheese. We still talk about how good that cheese
was!

It is not food stamps. I believe that the government pays farmers
for some certain products and then they process them and use them for
school lunch programs, and to give out to the "poor" and elderly
people. But I have not seen them passed out around here for years.
I do remember you had to have a certain income level. Maybe someone
knows more about the current programs.

Last I heard from my son who volunteers, local food banks give them
out once a month. They now go by how many you have in your family.
It's usually not much at all, but any extra can help families. Toni

It was my understanding that those were overages in various products
(butter, cheese, etc.) that were given away rather than wasted. Part of
the farmer subsidy thing, better to have overages and pay the farmers
higher than the market price, rather than have huge shortages.

They used to publish notices for that regularly--I haven't seen any in
some time that are not connected to income in some way (I think it
should connect to income, imho).

Dave's sister gets food from a local food bank occasionally. It is
all goverment packaged stuff, but no cheese. Stuff like canned
aspargus, plums, cherries, pears, applesauce, ect.. and pasta, rice,
and powdered milk. She also gets some dried fruits , which are
wonderful, like cherries, cranberries, and figs, prunes, rainsins,
and trail mix. She cant eat nuts or other dried fruits so she gives
them to me. Which is really sweet of her. She also gets canned
juices like grapefruit, orange, pineapple, apple, ect... ( some
times she gets cranberry). There are no income guidlines, just ask
how many are in your family.

There is a program called SHARE in most areas. You have to do a
couple hours of community service and you pay $15. We did this a
couple times, but found most of the food was not stuff we eat. It was
lots of processed stuff. Also, there just wasn't a whole lot of it!
Others have told us they got big boxes of food for the $15, but we
hgot only 1 or 2 plastic grocery bags. I felt I could do better by
discount & coupon shopping for items I really wanted.

They seem to still have commodities in some of the larger towns, but
there are income guidelines. Sr. citizens and families with small
children are usually served first, and I have been told that they
have very long lines. Used to be, you just went and stood in line,
first come, etc. I run our local food bank and most of our stuff
comes from the regional warehouse out of Grand Junction. They get
stuff that has been donated by companies and chain groceries and
salvage. We buy it at 19cents a lb. We also take donations from
individuals to buy the things we can't get from the warehouse.
A friend of mine has mentioned also that a lot of the commodities are
given to Indians on the reservations. Also, the govt has cut back on
the amount of food they buy from farmers for price support and just
pay them not to produce it in the first place!

When I was a kid the gov. used to give it out to low income
retirees ,now days it seems that our gov. will do any thing to help
out all these imigrants that we take in with open arms ,but nothing
to help out americans that really need help , seems these days that
if your not a foreigner you don`t get help in this country.